1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems that provide telephony services. More specifically, the present invention relates to an apparatus and a method that provides a unified telephony solution.
2. Related Art
Modern business enterprises make extensive use of different systems to provide telephony services, such as private branch exchange (PBX) systems, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, telephones, call centers, unified messaging systems, voice mail systems, teleconferencing systems, and next-generation applications that are currently available or will soon be available.
Each of the above-listed systems is typically provided by a different vendor. This piecemeal approach can fulfill the basic telephony requirements for a business enterprise. However, this approach has many drawbacks.
Each of the systems can be very costly. Hence, purchasing each solution from a different vendor can be an expensive proposition. Additionally, installing and maintaining the disparate systems is costly and often complicated because it can require services from many different entities. Furthermore, when there is a system failure, it is not always clear which system failed. This can make a problem hard to diagnose and can result in the wrong person being contacted to fix a problem. Moreover, adding new functionality can require services from multiple providers.
Furthermore, each of the different systems is typically designed with an inflexible proprietary architecture, which makes it hard for the systems to interoperate with each other.
Hence, what is needed is an apparatus and a method for providing a unified telephony solution that provides all of the above-listed services without the problems described above.